Inconsequent Behaviour

Children who repeatedly get into trouble for the same or similar behaviours are a great strain on their teachers and parents. They leave the adults responsible for their care confused, possibly angry and most certainly with a feeling that they lack the skills to cope. Some people may advocate comprehensive and instant punishment for these children; you have tried it and still nothing much changed. Two questions must surely come to mind. Why? What can I do about it?

Children will engage in repeated inappropriate behaviours for a variety of reasons. Some may be seeking attention; if they find a naughty behaviour gains attention, not surprisingly they will use it over and over. For other children there may be an unintended pay off, for instance, they are told the next time they exhibit a certain behaviour, their parents will have to come into school. The child may believe that, as their parents are separated, getting them together is a good thing; threrefore the behaviour will be repeated. The purpose of this paper is to focus on children who have a social comprehension difficulty. A social comprehension difficulty describes a specific difficulty that may be likened to any other specific difficulty. It could be riding a bike, dancing (me), dyslexia and so on.

A very convenient way of analyzing behaviour is to view it using ABC analysis.

A = Antecedent (that which comes first, the trigger) B = Behaviour (what happens as a result of the antecedent) C = Consequence (much more than a sanction, it also includes the effect on others) An every day situation may be: Gill looks strangely at John when he can’t read a word. John hits Gill. The teacher keeps John in at playtime. The other children get scared of John. Gill really doesn’t like John and so on. The consequences are huge.

The first question to address is why does the adult impose a sanction, what are the assumptions behind it? The first assumption is that the adult does not really want this type of relationship with the child; they would rather be praising, but needs must, so a punishment is imposed. The second assumption is that the next time John feels provoked he will think 'the last time I hit someone I got kept in at break and I didn’t like that'. This is where the adult could be wrong.

Let’s assume that the child has a specific social comprehension difficulty, in other words the process of learning via reward and punishment and the associated feed back via thought isn’t working too well. Just as a child with dyslexia can’t process written text too well, and the bad dancer can’t process music to movement efficiently. If this were true what would happen? Presumably the child would be getting into trouble over and over again for the same type of naughty behaviour. One way to prove that this is the case would be to teach the child very actively about the behaviour consequence cycle; just as we provide dyslexic students with multi-sensory teaching, and the poor cyclist with extra support and time to learn these skills, we must give those with reduced social comprehention a suitable intervention.

What to do

If you have highlighted the reason for the childs' behaviour, then an intervention called 'choice points' is very effective. It is probably best delivered as part of a general social skills development programme that is specifically tailored to the children in the group. However, it can produce results if delivered three times per week. Each session takes around ten minutes.

The first step is to tell the child why you are doing this; you are not doing it so that you can punish them. You want to help them because you think they are getting into trouble not because they are naughty, but because they don’t understand. The child will probably be rather lacking in trust, so it may be best to use imaginary incidents at first. As the child gains confidence in you s/he will be willing to be forthcoming about real incidents.

Ask the child “What happened?” You will probably get an answer that puts no blame on them, such as, “Jimmy hit me”. Get a piece of paper and write this in the middle of the page and draw a circle around it.

Then ask, “What happened before that?” Repeat what you did above, write it to the left of the previous comment and circle it.

Continue asking, “What happened before that?” Until you are satisfied that you have a reasonable account of the beginning of the incident.

Read how the incident began from the page to the child. For instance, “Paul and Jimmy had an argument. I walked into the classroom. Paul told me that Jimmy had said rude things about my Mum. I swore at Jimmy. Jimmy hit me.” Then ask, “What happened next?” Continue as before but this time working your way to the right until you have a reasonable account of the whole incident. Read back the whole incident to the child. At this point they often want to add something. If they do, add it and then read the whole incident back again. If the child agrees with the map of the incident draw in some arrows so that the flow of the incident is clear and graphical.

Put the map in front of the child and ask if s/he can spot where they had a choice. At first they may find this difficult, and you will probably have to help them. After a while they will become very adept at it. Mark in the choices on the map.

Once the child has identified all the choice points ask, “What were the choices here?”, pointing to one of the choice points, and write them in. If this is a social comprehension difficulty, then it is highly likely that they will have very few options to tell you. Teach the child about some that they had missed out. Four or five for each choice point is enough.

For each choice point you have four or five possible ways of responding (options). For each option ask the child, “What would happen if you chose that one?” Write in their response. If they don’t know, or come up with something very unlikely, help and teach them. Do this for every option.

Now you have a complex map of the incident. It contains a clear graphical map of the incident with the points at which the child had choices, and the choices that were available. Attached to each choice is a prediction of the likely consequence for the child for each option. For each choice point ask the child, “Which option would be best for you?”

Give the child the map to look at. Do this every time the child is involved in an incident.